


Turning Page

by itsmoonpeaches



Series: Ten Thousand Things [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar)-centric, Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Air Nomads (Avatar), Dead Aang (Avatar), F/M, Family, Family Feels, Jinora (Avatar)-centric, Post-100 Year War (Avatar TV), Post-Avatar: The Last Airbender, Spirit World (Avatar), Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27058357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmoonpeaches/pseuds/itsmoonpeaches
Summary: Jinora knew that she should not trust strangers, especially in a place as unpredictable as the Spirit World. But she was desperate. She whipped around, exclaiming, “Yes please! I’m looking for the Avatar!”The person before her smiled and stepped out from the shade of the entanglements of the banyan grove and desert. It was a man. He was tall, striking in his own way, and oddly familiar. When the light hit his face, she knew exactly who he was.“The Avatar, huh?” Aang asked with a twinkle in his silvery eyes, “I’m not sure if I’m the one you’re looking for, Jinora, but I can tell you that you’ve found an Avatar.”-Or, Jinora and Aang meet in the Spirit World. In the process, they learn about themselves and their lost culture.
Relationships: Aang & Jinora (Avatar), Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), Jinora & Katara (Avatar)
Series: Ten Thousand Things [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976455
Comments: 32
Kudos: 193





	Turning Page

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by a fanart comic by 0tterpenguins on Tumblr that I saw a while ago. Some of the dialogue is similar, but there is extra story in here that there was not in the comic itself. If you want to see that comic, I would suggest checking out their Tumblr page!
> 
> The title of this work is inspired by the name of a song by Sleeping At Last, also called Turning Page.

There were many things Jinora wanted to know. Why was the sky blue? Why was the sun hot? Why was Meelo so annoying? But at the moment, there was only one thing she wanted to know the answer to.

“Korra!” Jinora shouted into the winds of the Spirit World, “Where are you?”

Really, being the Avatar’s spiritual guide should have been a lot simpler than it was. In fact, Jinora wanted to reprimand herself for losing Korra so easily. One minute, the two of them were in a field of verdant blades of grass, and the next they were being eaten by an unknown spirit monster that lived in an undisclosed oceanic location. She could still feel the water dripping down her back, the gliding of sharp teeth upon her ripped clothing, and she shivered at the chilly feeling that peppered her skin with goosebumps.

Perhaps she should have seen this situation coming. She had read all about the Spirit World from various texts ranging from old Air Nomad scrolls to the journals of her grandfather, Avatar Aang.

How Jinora loved reading the adventures and monologues of her grandfather. They were hilarious sometimes, and incredible. (There was a particularly humorous anecdote involving her Gran Gran and Great Uncle Sokka disguising themselves as his parents at some Fire Nation school.) Aang had this quirk when he wrote where he had sometimes made the tail of a character too curly at the ends. She never asked Gran Gran Katara why that might have been, nor her father, nor her Uncle Bumi, nor Aunt Kya. She suspected that might have been his personality coming out on parchment, his carefree spirit that Gran Gran always reminisced about.

It was jarring to hear about him from her grandmother in comparison to how her father talked about him. To Tenzin, Aang was always the Avatar. He never referred to Aang as his father, and Jinora found that a little sad. There was a listlessness to Tenzin’s words, a kind of loss of emotion that Jinora only noticed because she recognized it when other people talked about her own father. It was reverence, a detachment. Like the person who spoke of another did not truly know them in a personal manner.

“Oh, your grandfather loved to laugh,” she remembered Gran Gran always saying whenever she asked for stories of him. “He played pranks on the acolytes so much that it became a running joke between them to guess which new acolyte would be next. Most of the time, Aang dropped a fruit pie on someone, just to lighten them up. He always thought if you were too stiff, then it would be difficult to understand the ways of an Air Nomad.”

But her father? He said things that were far less personal, far less jovial. “Avatar Aang ended the Hundred Year War at the age of twelve. He and Fire Lord Zuko started the Harmony Restoration Movement with Earth King Kuei and they began to form the United Republic of Nations. Avatar Aang was thirteen when they began this process, Jinora. That is very important to know,” her father said to her one day when she asked about him. Needless to say, she had been sorely disappointed in the answer.

Wandering about the Spirit World in search of her grandfather’s reincarnation had spurned her own thoughts of him again. She recalled his writings on the strangeness of the otherworld, how things never were what them seemed, that there was no rhyme nor reason to how things worked. That things were as they were because they could be.

“Korra!” she called again, cupping her hands around her mouth. It felt like hours that she was looking for her, and her feet were starting to hurt. She wished she could airbend in the Spirit World, because then maybe she would be able to jump around faster, or even run to the top of the spindly-looking treetops on either side of her path.

The forest she was in did not make any sense. It was twisting and meandering, and she was sure that she saw that odd glowing mushroom more than twice already. It was pulsating in a myriad of colors, and shifted from pink, to blue, to white, to rainbow all at once. The light was starting to make her eyes hurt, and she did not like it at all.

“What are you looking at?” the mushroom asked in a squeaky voice. “It’s rude to stare, you know!”

Jinora jumped, heart thumping as she yelped, and ran in the other direction. No, she did not like any of this at all.

The branches sped past her in streaks of browns and copper, augmenting the mysterious hue of the unnatural mix of swamp and desert. Two things that should not have been able to exist on the same plane. It made everything seem all the more confounding, that she should have to wade through swathes of dank water and balance on mounds of hot sand all at once. The squawking of unknown creatures did not help, especially since they all sounded like they were coming from everywhere. Perhaps, Jinora should have taken that into account before she ventured into a place like this, but there was no time to wallow in her misery when all she wanted was to find her companion and get out of there.

Things were starting to get strange. Well, stranger. There was only so much a book could tell her, after all. The sky started changing into various shades of green, like the color right before a tornado touched down and wrought havoc upon the earth. If that was not ominous enough, dozens of flickering fireflies as large as her fist came swarming in to engulf her. At least, she thought they were fireflies. They were more like giant bulbs of light. She was glad she could not see any feet, otherwise she would not know what to do with herself. She really disliked bugs.

Whispers ghosted across her, silken voices that brushed their fingertips on every part of her unbridled. She continued to shiver, sloshing through the mud and roots. Scales of fish were freezing on her exposed skin through her torn trousers. Slimy, the slither of flesh against flesh. Jinora did not know how much more she could take.

“Where is she?” she asked herself under her breath. She searched for the telltale Water Tribe blue that the lost Avatar wore through the bending branches and saw none. “I hope she’s okay.”

She could feel the humidity press onto her, an odd combination with the dryness of the beating desert sun. Then, in the distance and upon a far-off knoll, she spotted a fox. It bore into her gaze, its eyes a deep cerulean that shone bright against the brambles and sands. It was larger than a fox in the physical world and was the size of a wolf. In its mouth it clenched its jaws around a yellowed scroll. The creature seemed to project an ethereal light, a presence that was out of place. A Knowledge Seeker. She remembered a description of one in the pages she had read. Jinora skipped over a rock and followed it.

The fox turned its head away in a rapid motion, bounding across the land as if it was running away from something. She did not let that stop her. It was as if the Spirit World itself was on her side because she was as fast at the wind would take her, as if she still had her airbending abilities.

For that short while, Jinora was reminded why air was the element of freedom. The gusts channeled by her in tunnels of swirling energy that released her spirit into the world. She could feel every bit of her long for the chase, for the whispers upon the breeze that teased a giggle from her when she was small.

Up ahead, she saw the shape of a person. A silhouette of some sort, someone familiar. She recognized that ponytail, those bound pieces of hair at either side of a face, the muscular arms, and strong posture. Excited, Jinora sprinted forward, forgetting all about the mysterious fox.

“Korra!” she beamed, a grin threatening to escape, “I’m so glad I found you!” She reached a hand to the shadow.

She was met with the shoulder of a gigantic root from the swamp waters. Grains of sand swept by, as if to add to the insult of her mistake. She slumped forward, struggling to keep upright when she was so dejected. At this rate, she did not believe that she would ever find her.

She heard a few splashes behind her, rippling the shallow waters at her feet in uneven circles. A voice came, curious and deep. “You seem lost,” said someone, “Can I help you?”

Jinora knew that she should not trust strangers, especially in a place as unpredictable as the Spirit World. But she was desperate. She whipped around, exclaiming, “Yes please! I’m looking for the Avatar!”

The person before her smiled and stepped out from the shade of the entanglements of the banyan grove and desert. It was a man. He was tall, striking in his own way, and oddly familiar. When the light hit his face, she knew exactly who he was.

“The Avatar, huh?” Aang asked with a twinkle in his silvery eyes, “I’m not sure if I’m the one you’re looking for, Jinora, but I can tell you that you’ve found _an_ Avatar.”

There was something about the way he looked at her that made her feel loved in an instant. Something that told her that she could trust him without having to know him. It was a kindness that was often rare in a place like Republic City which was full of people wary of each other. It was empathy that could only come with living a life that was not easy.

Avatar Aang was tall, like her father. He even had similar features. He had her father’s tattoos and was shaven like him. They had the same dark brown beard, except Aang’s was short and cropped to his chin. There were other differences too. Her grandfather had a thinner nose, grayer eyes, lighter skin, airbender robes that looked a little more traditional. He was softer than Tenzin in many ways, calmer, a little sad.

What struck her as the most jarring was that he stood before her as a man not at the age he was at the end of his life, but as a younger adult in his prime. He looked like she imagined he would have in his late thirties or early forties and exuded a strength that she only recognized in Korra. An ancient knowing, like he could peer into your heart and know your story without having to ask. She saw in him what the rest of the world might have when he was alive, and what her Gran Gran loved.

“You know my name?” Jinora questioned, blinking in surprise. She reprimanded herself in her head. Of all the things she could have thought to say first, that had been it. “But we’ve never met!”

He gave her a rueful smile. “I know all of my grandchildren’s names,” he replied. “You, Ikki, Meelo, Rohan…all of you. I’ve wished to meet you.”

There were a lot of things that Jinora could have said at that moment. She thought of saying that she had wanted to meet him too, that she admired him, that she looked at his statue that stood over Yue Bay every morning, and wondered if he was just as legendary as the stories made him out to be. Instead, she reached out and grabbed his hand. Impossibly, it felt warm.

“Come on, Grandpa Aang! Let’s walk together!” she grinned. She did not bother to ask him if he was bothered by the title. She did not have time for worries like that because she was so happy. This was an opportunity she thought she would never have.

He laughed and let himself be pulled along.

Even though there was no bending the Spirit World, it was as if the winds rose to their command. Every step through the tangled roots and further into the mist generated air. Maple samara seeds rose from the ground, appearing as if from nowhere. They spun around them in frivolous twirls, dancing about them to their own tune. The tinkling of windchimes came from someplace beyond them, and Jinora could only remember what it was like to fly.

Through the creepers and fog, she spotted an unusual shape. It was the shadow of a building turned upside down. Its spires stuck to the roof at an angle, pointed downward, and the entire structure was caught in a jumbled net of thick vines. The limestone shone against the reflection of the far-off waters, numerous domes peeking through. She recognized what it was from the drawings she had seen.

“That’s Wan Shi Tong’s Library!” Jinora shouted with a joyful jig. She pointed at it; the other hand still gripped her grandfather’s. “It’s so big!”

Aang chuckled down at her as they stopped at the threshold of the forest. “You know a lot about the Spirit World for someone who has never been here,” he said.

“I like to know everything possible, anything that’s in a book…I want to know it,” she replied, nodding.

“You love reading,” he observed, a soft look in his eyes.

“I do! I’ve read everything you’ve written in your journals too!”

“Everything? That’s impressive!”

She rubbed that back of her head. “Well, almost everything. There’s one I haven’t read yet…” She hesitated before she continued, but for some reason, this felt like something that her grandfather should know. It felt important. “Your last journal,” she finished in a whisper.

Aang turned fully to her now. He let go of her hand. His eyebrows were upturned and furrowed, a frown shaping his lips. Perhaps it was a look of concern, or of a man who knew something she did not. Jinora was not sure which. All she knew was that the atmosphere had changed. She could feel heartache in her chest, a feeling she was unfamiliar with. She had a sudden urge to curl into a ball on her bed on a rainy afternoon and wished for a cup of tea and honey to soothe her.

Their surroundings seemed to sense the change as well because the winds dropped the circling seeds, and the waters left off a mist that felt that much cooler. Like the life was sucked out of it. The sky dimmed into a darker shade. She thought she had read somewhere that the Spirit World sometimes reacted to emotions, but she knew that none of this was hers. 

After a pause, her grandfather peered at her with a shining gaze. “Why not?” he asked in a cautious tone. Maybe he was afraid of the answer, she thought.

“Dad says that Gran Gran has it…that she’s always had it,” Jinora responded, glancing away. “He won’t let me ask her about it…” 

They walked in silence for several minutes. The path narrowed and then widened into a sudden arc that sloped up a hill. She saw the fox again, but this time it did not bother to look her way. It trotted upon the crest, golden sands eddying about its paws. It was shadowed by the grand vaulted edifice that hung above. Taking a pathway that Jinora had not noticed, it disappeared into the library.

Jinora started to follow it, seeking the hallway arch that she had seen that twisted into a makeshift entrance. She walked a few steps before realizing that she did not hear another pair next to her. She turned around to look behind her, seeing that her grandfather had not made another move.

She waved at him. “Aren’t you going to come in with me?” Jinora asked, tilting her head.

Aang blinked, then glanced downward. There was a disappointed expression on his face. “I’m afraid not. The spirit who lives in there doesn’t like me very much,” he explained. “This is where we say our goodbyes.” 

“Wan Shi Tong?” Jinora exclaimed, disregarding the rest of his statement. “That can’t be right! You’re the Avatar!”

Aang smiled at her, coming up to meet her. He reached out to pat her on the head. “If only it were that simple.” He looked at the upside-down building with a wistful air. “There is so much I wish I knew. So much I wish I learned when I was a child.”

“Like what?” she probed, leaning into his side. She stared at the black entranceway that threatened to separate them.

She could feel his stare on her. “The complete history of our people,” he said.

“But…don’t you know all of that? You taught dad everything he knows.”

He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “I was only twelve when I ran away and was frozen in the ice for a century. Even after the war when I had more time to search for artifacts, there were still things I never was able to learn. Gyatso always said we would have more time but, well…” 

Jinora could not help but feel like she saw him for the first time—not that she had known him for very long. She may have had the privilege to grow up in an era of peace, but she knew that she sometimes had the same yearning to _know_ that she supposed her grandfather was feeling right now.

There was something hollow about knowing that a part of yourself was forever lost because of an event you yourself could not control, and even almost two hundred years later she felt the loss of her culture. It was in the little things she did every day, from waking up to meditate, to wearing her acolyte robes. She wondered what it was like to live in one of the original air temples, what it was like to see herds of flying bison race, how it was to have more people like her instead of being a novelty. It was a constant need to find the truth in a maze made from deception and destruction. To discover what was left in a world that had all but purged her.

She could recognize that longing that she saw now on the face of a man long gone.

This was what connected the living and the dead…a desire to have what was unattainable. But to Jinora, this was only a small hurdle that needed to be traversed around. She tugged at his arm, pretending to not notice the resistance he had there.

“This isn’t our goodbye,” she said, adamant. “You’re coming with me and I’m going to convince that spirit to let you in.”

She heard his laugh as they made their way into the tunnel. “You’ve inherited your grandmother’s willpower,” he chimed, bemused. He trailed in after her without further reluctance.

After a few moments, the space opened into a tiled expanse. There were intricate mosaics on the floors and ceilings. Jinora found herself standing right-side up somehow, even though she knew she was standing on what would be the roof in an overturned building. The sensation was strange, as if there was never any gravity to worry about at all.

Flying buttresses arched from end to end, reliefs of owl faces were spaced evenly throughout, coffers lined in gold were carved into each dome, and winding tree roots snuck through the windows. An emerald light blanketed the walls and effigies, highlighting even the chiseled keystones of distant doorways. On every side, there was what seemed like miles of bookshelves.

“Wow,” Jinora breathed. She could not help but be surprised. “This place is amazing.”

Next to her, her grandfather laughed. “You should have seen it when it was still in the Si Wong Desert. None of these trees were here.” He tapped his chin with a thoughtful look. “But there is more sunlight now,” he noted.

Just as Jinora was gravitating toward a particularly inviting bookshelf, she heard a swooping noise. She shuddered, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. She felt her grandfather pull her close, and the fluttering of feathered wings stopped them from moving any further.

When she turned around, she was met with the black gaze of Wan Shi Tong himself. He was just as intimidating as the journals described him, yet seeing the real spirit was an experience she could not explain. It was as if she shrunk in size, smaller still to fit the imposing height of the fuming owl before her. He was large, stories high, with a body dark as ink, and a face whiter than snow. His eyes stared into her with a knowing that only a spirit could have.

“Humans are not welcome in my library. Leave now,” Wan Shi Tong’s booming voice commanded. The walkway Jinora and Aang stood on rumbled.

Jinora gulped. “But can’t you make an exception? You know that I’m with the Avatar,” she said. She did not bother to specify which Avatar.

“The Avatar is no longer welcome here…not after the last time I allowed him inside. You will leave or I will attack,” spoke the spirit. He swept a wing, gesturing at Aang. “I will not risk my collection again.”

However, Jinora was determined not to give up. Not after they had come this far and especially not after she had convinced her grandfather to follow her in the first place. She glimpsed his profile, thinking only of the words he had shared with her minutes before. There had to be something that would sway him.

“Please, great Wan Shi Tong,” Jinora implored, not faltering from the spirit’s glare. She cupped her hands tightly together. “We just want to learn about knowledge that’s been lost.”

“And what knowledge is that?”

It was easy to answer. She tilted her head upward, saying, “The history of the Air Nomads.”

That gave the owl some pause. They looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity. All was silent in the chambers. She could barely hear the scurrying of another Knowledge Seeker as its paws pitter-pattered on the floors, or the astonished gasp from her grandfather.

“Please, great spirit,” Jinora begged again. “We will respect your library. Besides, isn’t that why you are the knowledge spirit? So that no knowledge will be lost?”

After all, this was truly what she wanted. What _they_ wanted from this library. She wanted to spend time with her grandfather, of course, but to be able to share in this piece of the past that so few could understand…that was a gift beyond comparison.

Wan Shi Tong opened his beak to respond, but Jinora was afraid that he was going to reject her, so she rushed to interject. “I’ll give you knowledge! Since you came down here, humans invented the radio. I can tell you how it works!”

“I am well aware about how the radio works,” the spirit scoffed. “There is a box, and inside the box, there is a tiny man who sings and plays musical instruments.”

Jinora raised her eyebrows, leaning backward with a frown. “Actually, when we speak, our voices produce sound waves. Radio takes those sound waves and converts them into electromagnetic energy that is transmitted through the spectrum—”

“Alright, alright!” interrupted Wan Shi Tong. He looked as irritated as an owl could. “I did not know this,” he said as he shot a scornful look at the Knowledge Seeker behind him that was attempting to conceal itself behind a pillar. “Still, I am hesitant to allow you inside, especially with _this_ Avatar.”

Aang bowed deeply. “I apologize, great one. I will leave my granddaughter with you and take my leave. I’m sure you don’t want—”

“Oh, great spirit who knows ten-thousand things,” appealed Jinora once more. Her eyes began to water at the thought of leaving her grandfather behind without the information they were seeking. Without the time together that they deserved. “You know how painful it is to lose the knowledge you love. You know that so much of the Air Nomads was lost during the Hundred Year War. Don’t you think someone like me and someone like Avatar Aang should get to know all of that so that we can share it?”

“This Avatar is no longer part of the world of the living,” Wan Shi Tong said.

“But his family is!” Jinora begged. This time, she stepped closer to the spirit, and she held onto her grandfather’s hand so tightly that she was sure that her fingers would numb. “Please, just allow it this one time! I just…I…” The tears began to escape.

At that moment, it was clear to her how much she wanted this. Not just for herself, but for her grandfather as well. For her people, for her culture, for her family. All of them, including Meelo who liked to annoy her and Ikki every waking moment. To fill that gap, to understand what it really meant to be an Air Nomad. For her grandfather who she wanted to get to know, but never truly could. For all the stories she heard of him from her Gran Gran, from her father, from her Aunt Kya, and Uncle Bumi.

Loving her grandfather was much like loving the distant, historic memory of her people. She felt that love in her soul but craved to witness it herself. 

Wan Shi Tong lowered himself, eyeing her with scrutiny. After a pause, he said, “You may browse these halls. From now on, the only humans I allow here are you and the Avatar.” He seemed to nod in acquiesce, and straightened, preparing for flight. “The condition is that you share the knowledge you gain here—notably about the Air Nomads—with the world. Happy reading.”

He flapped away, soaring into the sky wells above. She stood there staring, mouth agape. What had happened came crashing into her. She grinned so broadly that her cheeks hurt.

“Come on, Grandpa Aang!” giggled Jinora. She held tight to Aang’s hand and they ran down the corridors into a gallery stacked with shelves of scrolls that appeared endless.

After that, things seemed to fall into place. They found the section labeled with the trio of swirls that symbolized the Air Nomads. There was an antique fresco above a writing desk that depicted monks in flight, spiraling around herds of sky bison. There were delicate designs of lotus flowers painted onto the tops of pillars in bright colors of pink, green, blue, orange, and gold leaf. Brilliant murals of mountains and the skies above them lined every hallway. In the center of a circular room there was a preserved rainbow mandala made of sand, untouched only because there was a sheet of glass over it.

“Beauty is transient, like our time on earth,” explained her grandfather when she asked about the mandala. “Nothing is permanent.”

They searched scrolls together, laughing at a funny entry from a nun with good humor involving her childhood antics and pranks with an Avatar who had lived over a thousand years ago. Jinora loved her writing style.

“Can you believe that they actually stole the Head Abbess’s bath robes?" she laughed.

“You know, I might actually remember something like that,” joked her grandfather. “Avatar Amala is one of my past lives.”

Aang pointed out art styles she never noticed or appreciated, explained how he used to drink butter tea in the mornings with Monk Gyatso, how the bison in the Eastern Temple were known to have the best milk for it. Jinora pulled out scroll after scroll, excitement filling her every time they both learned something new.

“Look here, grandpa! It says here that during the time of the first Avatar, our people lived on a giant floating lion turtle,” she informed him, touching a page with a drawing on it.

On another scroll, Aang pointed at something else. It became a game, in a way. They would trade knowledge for knowledge.

“We were foragers. It says here that we chose to abstain from meat because of our harmonious lifestyle with the spirits of the forest nearby,” Aang read aloud. He blinked, and Jinora thought she could see his smile in the dim candlelight. “Wow I…I never thought I would learn all these things about the Air Nomads. I thought it would be lost forever.”

“It’s not lost now,” she told him, resolve in her tone.

She walked from shelf to shelf, gasping at depictions of old architectural models of temples, seeing pictures of men shaving their heads with a peculiar contraption. There were even descriptions of marriages, of funerals, festivals that had not been celebrated for thousands of years, and a complete set of poems by Guru Laghima.

They must have been browsing for a long while, because Aang slowed and stiffened as if reacting to something unseen. He put down the pages he had been rifling through, a resigned sigh leaving his lips. Jinora placed hers next to his, shoulders drooping. Somehow, she knew that it was time.

“I have to look for Korra,” she said in a whisper. She sucked in a breath, clenching her fists. “You have to go, don’t you?”

When he did not respond, she continued, “Grandpa Aang maybe…when this is all over…I can come visit you again. Maybe we can learn about the history of our people together and I can bring it back to the physical world. None of it will be lost. Not anymore.”

He placed a hand on her back. “Jinora, you don’t know how much I would love that.”

That was all it took for her to catch him in the middle and embrace him. She started to shake. He started to fade away. “I wish you could come back with me. Gran Gran still misses you very much,” she cried into the fabrics of his robes. 

“Tell her I think of her every day,” he said softly. His voice was not as strong as it had been. It was purling into the air, a reminder of their limited moments left. “You are wonderful, Jinora. I am so proud of you.”

She shook her head. She cracked her eyes open just enough to see that the library was also waning away. “I don’t want to leave yet,” she hiccupped.

“It’s okay,” he responded, now sounding so far away that she had to strain to listen, “If you ever miss me, I did leave something behind. In the last journal…I’ve written my love for all of you.”

And just like that, he and the library were gone.

-

Jinora awoke days later in a pool of glowing water. Her whole body was submerged, and she felt warm and cold at the same time. She was surrounded by stone and ice, and she recognized the Southern Water Tribe all around her. Above her were the worried blue eyes of her grandmother. She had gentle hands on her and helped her to sit up.

Jinora had found Korra in the Spirit World, and Korra was safe. That should have been all that mattered. But, as soon as she saw her Gran Gran’s face, the first thing that came out of her mouth was not anything related to that.

“Gran Gran! I saw him!” she beamed. “I met grandpa in the Spirit World!”

Perhaps that was not what Katara was expecting either, because she had let go of Jinora. Her eyes were wide and disbelieving. She turned to the side, a wishful and sad expression gracing her features. “I didn’t know you could…I thought only the Avatar could enter…” she murmured to herself, but Jinora could hear every word.

Katara stood up, stopping only to assist Jinora in getting out of the tub. She could already hear others outside, waiting to come see her. She resolved to meet them, and she did. For a while, all thoughts of the Spirit World left her as she hugged her siblings close. She let her mother kiss her on every part of her face she desired.

Afterward, Jinora had time to herself, and all she could think about was her grandfather. She had only been with him for a short time, but she already missed him.

Later that night, she snuck around her grandmother’s home, searching for the sitting room where she knew Katara kept many of her personal books and scrolls. She did not know if it would be there, but she had to try.

It took longer than she would have liked, but as soon as she saw the familiar binding of her grandfather’s journal set, she knew it was the one. Untouched by her hands. Her fingertips slid over the cloth surface, feeling every thread that held it together. There were scuff marks here and there, but not nearly as many as the others she had read. She found a seat and sat down, opening the tome with care.

Inside, she found the same slanted handwriting with the same writing quirk. She smirked at the curled ends of characters, knowing somehow that it emulated the fond laughs he shared with her in Wan Shi Tong’s library. She could imagine the melody of it resounding in the room she was in. She peeled past the first page.

There were paragraphs upon paragraphs of stories of his and Katara’s children, of things he wished to tell his grandchildren if he had any, comical anecdotes of his best friends, stories that never made it into the journals of his travels. More intimate things, words closer to the heart.

 _I love them all already, Katara,_ Aang had written to his wife. _I know that my time here will be cut short, and I am sorry for it. But I do not regret the life that I have lived. My life with you has been beautiful, and everyday I have loved you more. Our children are grown and are adults we can be proud of. Their children I am sure will be just as wonderful as they are._

_The world is at peace. It is all that we have worked for, and it is all that I have ever hoped for. I know that the work of an Avatar is never over, and that someday there will be another threat that my reincarnation will have to contend with. But even though that is the way of things, I cannot help but be happy._

_I am grateful to you and Sokka for finding me. I am grateful for Zuko, Toph, Suki, and all our friends. We have lived together and fought together, and that is something I will never forget in any of the lives that come after this one._

_I am thankful most of all that you have loved me. I will always keep you with me._

She turned to the last page. There was a dried panda lily pressed onto the page. Etched onto the paper was a single sentence: _Thank you._

There was a creak and a knock on the door. Jinora jumped, setting down the journal and trying to hide it from view. She teetered on the stool she sat on.

Her grandmother peered inside, an apologetic smile on her face. She appeared a little shy, an emotion Jinora was not used to seeing from her. “Will you teach me how to enter the Spirit World?” Katara asked, biting her bottom lip.

Jinora made her way across the room. She hugged Katara, her cheek against the warmth of her parka. “Of course, Gran Gran. There’s someone there who misses you,” she said. The two of them did not let go for a long while. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! This took way too long to write, but things happen, you know?
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> The Air Nomad artwork is based off of Tibetan art including the frescoes and depictions of flowers on pillars. The sand art mandala is something I heard about years ago, and researched again to make sure that my memory was correct. Sand art mandalas are typically made by monks, and act as a form of meditation when they are created. They can take days or even weeks to make. Right after they are done with them, they destroy them and push the sand together. They dump it into water after. The message is the same: that nothing is permanent. It's supposed to remind you that you should stray away from detachment. 
> 
> Butter tea is also a real drink usually served with milk and salt. 
> 
> Please leave some love down below! Thanks for your support!


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